Nobody Pushed Tyler Clementi

On Monday, in a New Jersey court, Judge Glenn Berman sentenced Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail for crimes which emanated from his freshman-year spying on a former roommate with a webcam. That roommate, Tyler Clementi, was seen briefly kissing another male. Ravi's snooping – and then “tweeting” about it and sharing the video feed with several friends – is widely assumed to have been a factor in Clementi's September, 2010 suicide, accomplished by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

However, a suicide note left by Clementi, which has not been made public, reportedly did not name the Ravi-related events as the reasons for his suicide. And an in-depth story of the lives and interactions of Clementi and Ravi in New Yorker magazine shows Clementi not particularly bothered, at least initially, by the spying: “But its not like he left the cam on or recorded or anything / he just like took a five sec peep lol.” Furthermore, Clementi had gone to a gay student association meeting at Rutgers and told a friend “I would consider myself out…if only there was someone for me to come out to.”

The desperation of a young man driven to end his own life, is nearly beyond comprehension – and must certainly be so to his parents. But sadness, even tragedy, must not be confused with injustice.